For some deep, psychological reason Saint Nicholas avoided the leafy suburbs bathing in showers of money and dripping wealth.Â There the newest luxury car was the Holy Grail parked in the driveway for all to covet.Â With a stock broker being the favoured Messiah, preaching the vision of a rocketing stock exchange.Â With atonement found in new hairdo and blue rinse; and salvation in manicure and pedicure. Â And with avarice boldly proclaiming redemption.

Virtually all of the patrons were thinking sinners, accepting that they were as camels unable to pass through the eye of the needle.Â That being so, hell was where their best interests lay.Â And being totally insane, they were salesmen with a roving commission for the selling and buying of souls.Â They knew that they had a captive market.Â That the seven deadly sins were cherished and sought – as drugs by the addicted â€“ by the bulk of humanity.Â That all were destined for riotous reunions with those waiting in the tumult of hell.Â That the saintly were fringe dwellers destined for the quiet boredom of heaven.Â And good riddance!Â Let paradise be the dumping ground for all those unworthy of hell.Â God was welcome to them!

An elderly man, once an inmate of the asylum at the top of the hill, slowly ambled to the nest of almost empty outdoor tables.Â Instead of selecting his own table, he sat down opposite the saint without as much as a by your leave.Â Not that Saint Nicholas could have been bought to leave.Â Nor did he mind the gentleman sitting at his table, for the saint was a kindred spirit of all such as him.

Saint Nicholas picked up a book he’d been reading: The Memoirs of the CEO of Hades.Â “Do you think the river down there,” he said to the old man, waving the two-page book, “is one of the five bordering hell?”

“Rivers of hell?” the man asked, startled.

“Yes,” the saint said pensively.Â He held the book under the man’s nose.Â “It says in here that hell is bounded by the rivers Acheron, Cocytus, Styx, Phlegethon, and Lethe.Â I’d like to know if we’re on the borders of hell.”

“Oh, I hope not!” the elderly man said with a laugh.Â He squinted at the book under his nose.Â “What else does it say?”

“There are two words on the last page that might be of interest.”Â Saint Nicholas opened the book to its second and final page.Â “To quote: Paradiselost.”

“It’ll never be a best seller!” the old man said wryly.

The saint smiled wanly and held out his hand.Â “I’m Saint Nicholas,” he said.

“I’m Father Time,” replied the elderly man, shaking the saint by the hand.Â He rummaged in a vest pocket and pulled out a tiny hourglass.Â “See!” he said, holding up his credentials.

The saint smiled.Â “May I?” he asked, holding out his hand for the hourglass, and with the other he offered the two-page book for the man to peruse.

They made the exchange.Â Father Time began reading the terse description of hell, with the, valuing of the valueless being stipulated as the only entrance requirement. Â And Saint Nicholas stared pensively at the hourglass.

“You know,” he mused out loud, “we constantly travel in time.Â It’s either into the past through our memories or into the future through our hopes and fears.Â Doing so, we entirely overlook the here and now.Â Yet this very instant is the only time that we actually have.”

“What?” said Father Time, aghast at an unthinkable heresy spoken here on the possible banks of hell.Â “What’s that you say?”

The saint shrugged.Â “I’m probably a barking lunatic,” he said wryly, smiling at the sudden insight.Â “But it’s just dawned on me that it’s best to forget in order to remember better.”

“You are mad!” blurted Father Time, experience making him an expert on the matter.Â “Totally and absolutely mad!”

Saint Nicholas shrugged.Â “It seems best to forget all that doesn’t really matter so as to better remember all the things that do.Â In the here and now!”Â He gazed unflinchingly at Father Time’s agitated face.Â “So I suppose that means I don’t believe in time anymore.”

“That means,” said the elderly gentleman rising to his feet and brandishing the book like a weapon, “that you don’t believe in me!”

“You don’t exist, in a manner of speaking,” the saint said sagely, though not meaning to give offense.

But Father Time took umbrage.Â “You young upstart!” he said angrily, waving the book; and in so doing knocked the hourglass from the saint’s hand – it fell and shattered on the table.Â “My glass!Â My glass!” he wailed, stumbling away into the deepening twilight, still holding the book.Â “My glass!Â My glass!”

“Nicholas, you really put your foot in it!” said a laughing female voice behind him.Â His guardian angel walked by him and sat in the chair vacated by the elderly gentleman.Â She smiled warmly.Â “You know, Nicholas, it’s taken you a while to work it out about time.”

Nicholas cocked his head as he gazed at her, clothed as always in white.Â “Oh, what do you mean?”

The angel laughed softly.Â “That there’s no time but now.Â Only now!”

The saint nodded.Â He gazed at her with an odd expression on his face.Â “Remind me, please.Â Eternity,” he said slowly, thoughtfully, “is also only now?”

His companion nodded.Â “Eternity is this instant, constantly.Â It’s always!Â And always has no direction.”

At last the great truth dawned on the saint.Â “That must mean that Ms Right, if she exists, must also be here – right now!”

The angel smiled.Â “She exists, Nicholas,” she said softly.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed the saint.Â “It’s you!Â You!Â It’s been you all along, right under my very nose.Â You’ve been there right in front of me, and I didn’t see.Â “It’s you!”

Miss Right, guardian angel of Saint Nicholas, looked at Azrael, the Angel of Death.Â “Let’s take him home,” she said softly.Â “Home to the Halls of the Father.”

The doctor looked down on the still figure slumped on the old work bench.Â She’d come to investigate, for an elderly gentleman suffering from dementia had ranted that the devil had crossed the river and was in the slaughter house.

“Poor Nicholas,” the doctor said softly, feeling no pulse.Â “You’re finally out of the madness.”

She brushed away a tear rolling down her cheek, for she had grown quite fond of Nicholas over all the years of his incarceration in the asylum.Â Except at the very beginning, he’d not received a single visitor.Â Which wasn’t strange.Â For the old chap had never known his father, and his mother had abandoned him when he was just a lad to run away with a sailor, and was long dead.Â And Nicholas had never married, for no girl would have him.Â Thus there were no children.Â Tragically, when he was but a young man he was involved in a motorcycle accident, causing head injuries so sever that he was committed as an inmate of the asylum.

“Poor old bugger!” muttered the doctor.Â “Poor old bugger!”Â The sudden loud squawking of hens in the slaughter house assaulted her ears.Â “Shut up!” she cried in a distressed voice.

“Poor old thing,” murmured Saint Nicholas, watching the fading figure of the doctor.Â “It’s all so very insane!’

“My lord,” Miss Right in white said gently to her knight, “shall we go?”

Saint Nicholas thumbed the starter button of the black motorbike with sidecar attachment.Â It rumbled into life.Â Then with the lady in white seated behind him and she in black in the sidecar, the three of them roared along the stardust road high above hell’s river and leading to the lofty Halls of the Father beyond the stars.

I am intrigued by the proposition that what you believe is true for you - even if no one else believes it or regards it as true. That you will seek and find evidence proving to you that what you believe is true, despite the beliefs of others. Thereby imp